Caesarean Section Deliveries Is A Racket: Maneka Gandhi

For the past few week a petition to bring the required transparency and accountability institutional deliveries is running in India.

The significant rise in the caesarean section deliveries and lack of professionalism surrounding it, led to over 1.3 lakh people signing the online petition, seeking government intervention.

Women and child Development minister Maneka Gandhi has written to union health minister J P Nadda raising the alarming concerns.

She also demanded that hospitals must publicly display the number of c-section surgeries and normal deliveries.

The petition regarding the caesarean deliveries was initiated on Change.org by Mumbai-based Subarna Ghosh.

Maneka Gandhi claimed that the situation is worse in the private hospitals. She also said that naming and shaming of gynaecologists who do caesarean deliveries for no reason at all except money seems to be the only option going forward.

As per the National Family Health Survey 2015-16, the rate of caesarean deliveries in some states is as high as 87.1%, whereas the World Health Organisation (WHO) prescribes average caesarean deliveries to be at 10-15% of the total number of deliveries in the country.

The petition also seeks to highlight the trend of hospitals and doctors pushing women towards surgical deliveries.